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Labor Camps Bibliography

1. Birnbaum, Jacob. I kept my promise: my story of the Holocaust. Lexington,
MA: Jason R. Taylor, 1995. xii, 210 pp. Note: The author, Jacob Birnbaum, originally
from Poland, spent three years in six different Nazi slave-labor camps. The
book, used as a social studies text by some schools, includes maps of labor
camps and a timeline.

2. Blocker, Joel. Europe: World War II slave labor victims demand
compensation. Prague: Radio Free Europe, August 31, 1998. Note: A class-action suit calling for compensation for slave
labor has been filed in California against 16 German firms including Volkswagon,
Daimler-Benz and Siemens. To ward off this type of litigation, many German companies
have supported the idea of a "humanitarian" fund funded by private
and public monies; at the same time, the firms deny legal responsibility, saying
that the Nazis forced them to use slave labor. Filed in Library at B9.

3. Borkin, Joseph. The crime and punishment of I.G. Farben.
New York: Barnes and Noble, 1997. xi, 250 pp. Note: A number of German chemical companies joined together
during World War I; in 1925 these companies merged into a single corporation
known as I.G. Farben. The corporation lined up with Hitler when he became chancellor,
and although I.G.'s head Carl Bosch, a vocal anti-Nazi, pushed the industrial
need for Jewish scientists before his death in 1940, I.G. led the industrial
preparation for war. During the war, I.G.'s industrial complex built at Auschwitz,
to exploit the supply of death camp labor for the production of synthethic rubber
and oil, was so enormous that the complex used as much electricity as the city
of Berlin. I.G. also made money from the sale of Zyklon B used in the gas chambers.

4. Breitman, Richard. Official secret: what the Nazis planned,
what the British and Americans knew. New York: Hill and Wang, 1998. viii, 325
pp. Note: The author blames the Allies' strict suppression of information
about Hitler's killings for the failure to save more Jewish lives and property
and to punish many known war criminals,.

5. Civil affairs handbook: France. Section 2A: German military
government over Europe - France. Army Service Forces Manual M352-2A. Washington:
Army Service Forces, 1944. 65 pp. Note: This wartime study compiled information about the harsh
effects of German occupation on French banking, foreign trade, conscription
of labor, and transportation. The French were also required to pay the costs
of occupation and the Jews were subjected to both German anti-Jewish legislation
and French anti-Jewish laws.

6. Davis, Douglas. "Behind the headlines: survivors recall
Swiss policy of using Jews for slave labor". Online Global News & Analysis(January
5, 1998). Note: A British TV documentary revealed that Jewish refugees
in Switzerland were subjected to forced labor in a network of more than 100
work camps established by official decree in 1940. Filed in Library at D10. Online: http://www.jta.org/jan98/05-camp.htm.

7. Dobbs, Michael. "Ford and GM scrutinized for alleged
Nazi collaboration: firms deny researchers' claims on aiding German war effort".
Washington Post(November 30, 1998): A1. Note: Ford Motor Co. has hired researchers and historians,
as well as lawyers, to defend a civil case brought against them on behalf of
a young Russian woman forced from her home to work at the Ford plant at Cologne
where she lived in a labor camp. Filed in Library at D3.

8. DuBois, Josiah E. The Devil's chemists: 24 conspirators of
the international Farben cartel who manufacture wars. Boston: Beacon Press,
1952. 374 pp. Note: The Nuremberg trial of industrial war criminals held
by the Americans in May 1947, ended in May 1948. Twenty-four I.G. executives
were indicted and charged with five counts including "slavery and mass
murder". Although the court did convict the defendants most directly involved
in the Aushwitz labor camp, Josiah E. DuBois, chief of the prosecution staff
for the I.G. case, vowed to write a book about the Farben cartel when the court
passed down sentences "light enough to please a chicken thief".

9. Favez, Jean-Claude. Une mission impossible? Le ICRC, les
déportations et les camps de concentration nazis (An impossible mission?
The International Red Cross, the deportations and the Nazi concentration camps).
Lausanne: n.p., 1988. Note: According to Favez, the International Red Cross in Geneva
knew in 1942 about the systematic murder of European Jews. A Red Cross committee
met to consider an appeal against this genocide; under the influence of the
Swiss government, the committee did not follow through.

10. Friedlander, Saul. Nazi Germany and the Jews: the years
of persecution. Volume I. New York: HarperCollins, 1997. xii, 436 pp. Vol. I.
Note: The liquidation of Jewish economic life in Nazi Germany
was first tested by the Viennese model which called for a drastic restructuring
of the economy through the emigration of the Jewish proletariat, the liquidation
of unproductive businesses, the establishment of labor camps for the impoverished
Jewish masses. By 1938, all Jewish economic existence was endangered in Germany:
all Jews were ordered to register their property, lists of services forbidden
to Jews were published, Jews were forbidden to practice medicine and law, and
finally, a ban was announced on all Jewish business activity.

13. Gregor, Neil. Daimler-Benz in the Third Reich. New Haven:
Yale University Press, 1998. xii, 276 pp. Note: Skilled Jews were forced to work at Daimler-Benz before
final deportation; beginning in 1944, Daimler-Benz's production was relocated
to decentralized underground caves dug out by concentration camp inmates as
forced laborers.

15. Hediger, Ernst S. "Nazi exploitation of Occupied Europe".
Foreign Policy Reports 18, no.6(June 1, 1942): 66-79. Note: This article, published months after Pearl Harbor, offers
a wealth of information about economic issues related to WWII that are currently
being looked at by Holocaust scholars. Hediger makes the point that the Nazi
drive for power was the best prepared drive, in a military, economic and psychological
sense, for world conquest ever conceived with the Nazis employing a pay-as-you-go
war technique. Special economic units accompanied the military forces with the
charge to obtain resources for the continuation of war through looting and reorganizing
the conquered territories in order to pay the bills for new conquests. Occupation
authorities were given quotas for workers to be transported to Germany with
the workers' remittances paid for by the occupied country. The author predicts
that the system of "streamlined looting" will reuslt in the total
depletion of goods and financial bankruptcy of the conquered countries. Filed in Library at H41.

16. Herbert, Ulrich. Hitler's foreign workers: enforced foreign
labour in Germany under the Third Reich. New York: Cambridge University, 1977.
510 pp. Note: Originally written in German in 1987, this book has been
called a definitive work on the subject based on research in government and
company archives, as well as interview collections. Herbert's account provides
an examination of the twelve million foreigners who served the war economy,
a third of Germany's workforce in 1944.

18. International Military Tribunal: Nurnberg, 1. Toronto, Ontario:
Nizkor Project, 1996-1998. Note: This webpage leads to the transcripts of the postwar
Nurnberg Trials including the U.S. Chief of Counsel for Prosecution of Axis
Criminality's 1946 Nazi conspiracy & aggression which includes Chapter 8
on "Economic aspects of the conspiracy", Chapter 10 on The slave labor
program", Chapter 11 on "The concentration camps", and Chapter
14: "The plunder of art treasures" with information on the Einsatzstab
Rosenberg (ERR); the cooperation of Hermann Goering; General Government's confiscation
laws and decrees; the nature, extent and value of property stolen; and legal
references and list of documents relating to the plunder of art treasures. Online: http://www.nizkor.org/hweb/imt.

19. Klein, Gera Weissman. All but my life. New York: Hill &
Wang, 1995. Note: The Polish author survived Nazi work camps and a three-hundred-mile
forced march during the winter of 1945.

20. Kogon, Eugen. The theory and practice of hell: the German
concentration camps and the system behind them. New York: Berkeley, 1960. 328
pp. Note: Kogon, a prisoner at Buchenwald, describes the death
camp system from every possible angle.

21. Laver, Ross. "Money and morality: Volkswagen has always
insisted that it was following orders from the Nazis to use slave labor".
Maclean's (Canada) 111, no.37(September 14, 1998): 37. Note: Investigation into the economic aspects of the Holocaust
continues with Volkswagen's disclaimer for responsibility for using slave labor
during WWII.

22. Laver, Ross. "Money and morality: Volkswagen has always
insisted that it was following orders from the Nazis to use slave labro".
Maclean's (Canada) 111, no.37(September 14, 1998): 37. Note: Investigation into the economic aspects of the Holocaust
continues with Volkswagen's disclaimer for responsibility for using slave labor
during WWII.

23. Lochner, Louis P. Tycoons and tyrant: German industry from
Hitler to Adenauer. Chicago: Henry Regnery, 1954. 304 pp. Note: A study of industrial leaders and their contributions
to the Nazi war effort including financial contributions to Hitler's movement.
Chapter 12 is on forced labor and the spoliation of foreign plants.

24. McLarin, Kimberly. "Holocaust survivor will share $2.1
million in reparations". New York Times(September 20, 1995): B5. Note: Hugo Princz and 10 other Holocaust survivors settled
for $2.1 million with Germany for their WWII suffering in Nazi concentration
camps.

25. Munns, Roger. "Holocaust survivor sues for "back
wages" from camp: man says German companies owe him for work he did for
them in labor". Augusta Chronice Online(August 18, 1997). Note: Article tells of a man who claims that German companies
owe him for work he did for them in labor camps during the war. The companies
include Krupp, BASF, Hoecht, Bayer and Daimler-Benz. Online: http://www.augustachronicle.com/stories/020302/fea_LB0514-2.000.shtml.

26. Murphy, Kevin. "Compensation urged for Nazi's victims
in World War II, Holocaust". Kansas City Star(December 1, 1998). Note: This article about the financial fallout of the Holocaust
notes that researcher Miriam Kleiman's work in uncovering records about companies
that used slave labor to produce Nazi war machinery has brought about a class-action
lawsuit. Filed in the Library at M14.

27. Murr, Andrew and Tom Masland. "The Swiss halo slips
again: add Jewish camps to Switzerland's list of sins". Newsweek 131, no.4(January
26, 1998): 36+. Note: During the Nazi era, the Swiss requested Germany to add
the letter "J" to Jewish passports and did not extend Swiss banking-secrecy
laws to cover Jews who had to reveal their account numbers, secret codes, and
balances. Recent research show that the Swiss not only denied safe harbor and
stole gold from Holocaust victims, but that the Swiss also maintained work camps
for over 20,000 Jews, including resident Jews. Filed in the Library at M5.

29. Oral history interview guidelines. Washington: United States
Holocaust Memorial Museum, 1998. ix, 140 pp. Note: The Holocaust museum collects nd produces video and audio-taped
testimonies related to the Holocaust. These guidelines, providing direction
in all aspects of conducting an interview, were created for the Museum's own
interviewers.

30. Pool, James. Hitler and his secret partners: contributions,
loot and rewards, 1933-1945. New York: Pocket Books, 1997. xiv, 415 pp. Note: This is the tale of bizarre financial relationships during
the Nazi regime involving Germany's top businessmen including financiers and
industrialists, as well as foreign bankers and statesmen. The author describes
how Nazis profited from looted art, labor camps, and stolen property.

32. Silverman, Dan P. Hitler's economy: Nazi work creation programs,
1933-1945. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1998. 384 pp. Note: The story of Germany's economic recovery from the Depression.
These early work camps served as a model for Hitler's future labor programs
as Germany moved from creating jobs to allocating labor.

33. "Slave driver - Albert Speer: his battle with truth
by Gitta Sereny". Economist (London) 336, no.7933(September 23, 1995):
78. Note: According to the reviewer, Sereny claims that Speer,
responsible for the dreadful German slave-labor program, reconstructed his past
following the war in order to define the limits of his knowledge about the extermination
of the Jews.

This book review is filed at S4 in the Library.

34. Sofsky, Wolfgang. The order of terror: the concentration
camp. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996. Note: A German sociologist, Sofsky focused on Nazi concentration
camps from 1944 to 1945, with an emphasis on the SS camp operators in this work
which was first published in Germany in 1993. Basing his work on archival records
and the testimony of survivors, the author concluded that the camps employed
physical and psychological terror and violence in establishing a system of absolute
power, a system without civilized social norms. The social dynamics and the
physical design of the camps encouraged sadistic behavior on the part of the
lower members of the power elite. Daily life was reduced to a struggle for survival.

35. Somerville, Sean. "Suing for reparations". Baltimore
Sun(January 17, 1999): 1D, 4D. Note: The success of lawsuits against Swiss banks has given
new impetus to war-crimes class action suits. Along with the success of litigation,
the flow of government records from archives making public tens of thousands
of documents classified from WWII through the Cold War is working to make courts
a popular political forum for groups with grievances.